Rockford’s Symbol: Enduring Art or a Giant Red Boondoggle?

Rockford’s Symbol: Enduring Art or a Giant Red Boondoggle?

There are certain things a Rockford artist eventually learns are expected of them. Sooner or later, somebody is going to suggest a sock monkey. A screw is always available. The Rockford Peaches remain eternally on deck. And looming over all of it, quite literally, is The Symbol.

You know The Symbol. Everybody in Rockford knows The Symbol, even if quite a few people couldn't tell you what it is supposed to symbolize.

Officially titled Symbol, the enormous sculpture standing near the Rock River was created by Russian-born American sculptor Alexander Liberman, one of the major figures in 20th-century American monumental sculpture. Constructed from massive steel cylinders painted bright red, the work has become one of Rockford's most recognizable landmarks.

But Rockford's relationship with it has never been quite that simple.

When Symbol arrived in the 1970s, it immediately became something Rockford excels at producing: an argument.

To supporters, it was exactly the sort of ambitious public artwork a city like Rockford should have. Here was a monumental sculpture by an internationally recognized artist, placed prominently along the river and impossible to mistake for anything else. Rockford wasn't merely decorating a park. It was participating in contemporary art on a scale usually associated with much larger cities.

To critics, it was a collection of giant red pipes.

And expensive ones.

That disagreement has followed Symbol for decades. Depending on whom you ask, it is an important example of modern public sculpture, an enduring Rockford landmark, an incomprehensible pile of industrial tubing, or evidence that somebody somewhere had access to public money and very persuasive presentation materials.

Which may be precisely why it has succeeded.

Public art that everyone immediately agrees is pleasant tends to become invisible. A tasteful statue sits in a park. People walk past it. Nobody argues about it at the dinner table thirty years later.

Rockford has been arguing about Symbol for roughly half a century.

Liberman's work makes particular sense in an industrial city. His monumental sculptures frequently used cylinders, beams and other fabricated steel forms, transforming the vocabulary of factories and heavy industry into abstraction. In Rockford—a city whose identity was built around manufacturing, machinery and metalworking—the material doesn't exactly feel foreign.

It looks manufactured because it is.

It looks industrial because it is.

And it looks a little like somebody dropped the contents of a gigantic machine shop beside the Rock River because, well, this is Rockford.

Over time, however, something happened that neither the sculpture's defenders nor its detractors could completely control. Symbol stopped merely being a controversial piece of public art and became The Symbol.

The capitalization almost feels necessary.

It became part of the city's visual shorthand. Photograph Rockford long enough and eventually The Symbol appears. Design something intended to announce ROCKFORD and somebody will suggest putting The Symbol in it. Along with the sock monkey, the screw and the Rockford Peaches, it entered that small collection of images Rockford continually uses to explain itself to itself.

That doesn't mean everybody suddenly decided they liked it.

That's the interesting part.

A landmark doesn't necessarily require affection. It requires recognition. The Eiffel Tower was despised by prominent artists when it was built. Plenty of cities contain monuments their residents spent years mocking before eventually becoming fiercely protective of them. Familiarity does strange things to public art. Yesterday's monstrosity becomes today's landmark and tomorrow's irreplaceable piece of civic identity.

Imagine someone announcing tomorrow that The Symbol was going to be removed permanently.

People who have spent forty years calling it ugly would probably be among the first to complain.

Because after all this time, the question isn't really whether Symbol is beautiful.

The better question is whether Rockford would feel slightly less like Rockford without it.

Rockford Symbol

I think it would.

And maybe that's the final verdict on the old argument about whether The Symbol was a boondoggle or enduring art.

A boondoggle disappears when the money is gone.

Art hangs around long enough for everybody to argue about what it means.

Nearly fifty years later, those giant red pipes are still standing beside the Rock River, and Rockford is still arguing.

That sounds suspiciously like art.

 

Der Rathskeller: 88 Years of German Food on Auburn Street

For generations of Rockford residents, you hardly needed to give directions to Der Rathskeller. You just said 1132 Auburn Street.

Der Rathskeller opened there in 1931, when Fred Goetz, a Wisconsin native of German descent, established a sausage shop and delicatessen on Rockford's North End. What began as a small neighborhood business grew into one of Rockford's longest-running and most recognizable restaurants, serving German food from the same Auburn Street location for 88 years.

The menu became part of the institution: sausages, sauerkraut, schnitzel, German potatoes, sandwiches and beer. By 2010, local tourism materials were still describing Der Rathskeller as a Rockford favorite where "German ancestry" showed through in both its lunch sandwiches and traditional family-style German dinners.

The Rathskeller Rockford. Ya, ya, ya. 

But Der Rathskeller was one of those Rockford places where the building, atmosphere and accumulated memories mattered almost as much as the food.

For roughly four decades, the restaurant was owned by former Rockford schoolteacher and principal Betty Giesen. Under Giesen, Der Rathskeller became firmly embedded in North End life. She added the restaurant's outdoor beer garden in 2009, creating another feature that would become closely identified with the place. When Giesen retired in 2016, her son Mike DuPre took over and operated Der Rathskeller for another three years.

And then there was the commercial.

For decades, Rockford radio listeners heard a polka-backed Der Rathskeller jingle performed in an exaggerated German accent by local radio engineer Chuck Ingle. The advertisement became so familiar that generations of Rockfordians could probably have recited the address without ever looking it up:

1132 Auburn Street.

And, inevitably:

Yah, yah, yah.

The commercial became one of those peculiar bits of shared Rockford culture — something meaningless to almost anyone from somewhere else but instantly recognizable to people who grew up here.

Like many old Rockford institutions, Der Rathskeller even accumulated a ghost story. Tales circulated that founder Fred Goetz occasionally returned to keep an eye on things in the basement. Whether Goetz ever actually punched in for the supernatural night shift is another question, but a restaurant doesn't stay in the same place for nearly nine decades without acquiring a few stories.

The original Der Rathskeller closed in December 2019 after 88 years in business. There was hope that the closing wouldn't be permanent, and new owners purchased the property the following spring. After extensive renovations, the restaurant reopened in October 2020 as Rathskeller Rockford.

The timing could hardly have been worse.

Opening a restaurant during the COVID-19 pandemic proved an uphill battle, and the revived Rathskeller closed in October 2021, just one year and 13 days after reopening. The Auburn Street building then sat vacant for more than three years.

But 1132 Auburn Street wasn't finished being a restaurant.

In 2024, the property was purchased by Barbara and Claudio Pennacchi. Their daughter Lia Pennacchi and her husband, chef Chase Williams, transformed the historic space into Plume, an upscale-casual restaurant specializing in the cuisine of Northern Italy, particularly the traditions of Emilia-Romagna, where the Pennacchi family has roots. Plume opened June 19, 2024.

Plume

The cuisine changed from German to Italian, but the new owners didn't try to erase what had come before them. Original Der Rathskeller artifacts, including an old liquor license and menu, were preserved as part of the building's story. The old beer garden became Plume's patio and spritz bar.

That's probably a fitting fate for one of Rockford's great restaurant addresses.

Restaurants disappear. Menus change. Owners retire. Signs come down. The places that survive longest aren't necessarily preserved exactly as they were.

Sometimes the building survives because somebody finds another reason for people to gather there.

More than 90 years after Fred Goetz opened his sausage shop and delicatessen, people are still going out for dinner at 1132 Auburn Street.

The food is Italian now.

But Rockford still knows the address.

 

The Rockford Files: The Tunnels Beneath the City

There are tunnels under Rockford. That’s the easy part. What they were for, where they go, and what might have happened inside them is where things get a little more Rockford.

For generations, stories have circulated about passages beneath the city. Ask enough longtime residents and eventually somebody will tell you about a tunnel beneath an old factory, school, hospital, downtown building, or seemingly ordinary basement. Some versions of the story are perfectly mundane. Others involve bootleggers, gangsters, the Underground Railroad, Cold War fallout shelters, secret entrances, and passages connecting buildings that nobody remembers ever being connected.

Tunnels and Trolls, anyone?

The interesting thing about Rockford’s underground legends is that, unlike many urban legends, they begin with something unquestionably real. There actually are tunnels beneath parts of Rockford. From there, however, the case file gets considerably thicker.

The Official Explanation

Rockford spent much of its history as a heavily industrial city. Enormous factories and complexes required steam, electricity, water, communications, and other services, and underground utility passages were a practical way to move some of those services between buildings. Rob Wilhelmi, a Brownfields Redevelopment Specialist for the City of Rockford, has publicly discussed being inside some of Rockford’s underground spaces and identified at least some of them as utility tunnels.

That explanation should probably solve the mystery. A tunnel connecting two old industrial buildings doesn't require bootleggers, secret societies, or supernatural intervention. It requires pipes.

But this is Rockford, and "there were pipes down there" was never going to be the version people remembered.

File #1: The Prohibition Tunnels

Rockford was not exactly an innocent little Midwestern village during Prohibition. Gambling, bootlegging and other illicit enterprises existed here just as they did throughout northern Illinois, so stories that underground passages might have been useful for moving liquor or people aren't inherently absurd.

Over the years, stories have attached themselves to various downtown basements and underground passages. In some versions, liquor traveled through them. In others, they allowed people to enter or leave establishments without being observed. Inevitably, the name Al Capone sometimes appears.

This last development should always trigger the historian's warning light. Across the Midwest, approximately every third mysterious basement built before 1935 eventually becomes an Al Capone hideout. An old tunnel plus Prohibition does not automatically equal Capone.

Still, secondary use of an existing utility or service passage during Prohibition is entirely plausible. Plausible and proven, however, are two different things. For now, much of the Prohibition tunnel story belongs in the file marked UNCONFIRMED.

File #2: The Underground Railroad

Another persistent category of Rockford tunnel story involves the Underground Railroad. This one deserves particular caution because Rockford and northern Illinois have genuine connections to abolitionism, making the stories sound immediately believable.

The problem is that Underground Railroad folklore has attached itself to old houses, cellars and tunnels throughout the Midwest. A strange room beneath an old building becomes a hiding place. A sealed doorway becomes an escape route. A tunnel becomes evidence that enslaved people passed through it on their journey north.

Sometimes documentary evidence supports those claims. Sometimes family histories provide credible clues. Other times somebody discovers a peculiar hole in a basement and Harriet Tubman gets involved by Tuesday.

Without documentation connecting a particular Rockford passage to Underground Railroad activity, the responsible conclusion is that the story is possible but unproven. The actual history of abolitionism is interesting enough without turning every nineteenth-century cellar into a secret station.

File #3: The Fallout Shelters

The Cold War added an entirely new underground layer to American life. Fallout shelter signs appeared on buildings. Civil-defense officials considered basements and other protected spaces potential refuges from radioactive fallout. Children practiced drills while adults contemplated the cheerful possibility that civilization might end before dinner.

Rockford participated in that culture like virtually every other American city. Underground areas beneath schools, public buildings, factories and other large structures naturally became associated with civil defense. Memories of those places survive, but memories also mutate.

A basement designated as a fallout shelter becomes a bunker. A bunker becomes a tunnel. A tunnel becomes part of a network. Give the story another thirty years and somebody can walk underground from one side of Rockford to the other without ever seeing daylight.

Which brings us to the big one.

File #4: The Secret City Beneath Rockford

This is the grand unified theory of Rockford tunnels: somewhere beneath the streets is an enormous interconnected system linking downtown buildings, factories, theaters, schools and government facilities. Depending on who's telling the story, the tunnels may extend for miles. Some are supposedly large enough for vehicles. Others allegedly cross beneath streets or even approach the Rock River.

The evidence for one giant interconnected underground Rockford is considerably less impressive than the stories about it. But this is exactly how urban folklore develops.

Imagine a real tunnel connecting Factory A and Factory B. Factory B has another service passage. A nearby building has a large basement. Three blocks away is an old fallout shelter. Someone's grandfather remembers walking through one of the tunnels in 1958. Somebody else's uncle remembers an entrance that was sealed during demolition in 1974.

Now add Prohibition. Add gangsters. Add eighty years.

Congratulations. Rockford has an underground city.

The exaggeration doesn't necessarily mean the people telling these stories are lying. Human beings connect fragments. Memories merge with things we've heard from other people. Buildings disappear, leaving behind stories that can no longer easily be checked. Eventually nobody remembers whether Grandpa actually walked through the tunnel or merely told a story about somebody who did.

The Truth Is Down There

And that's what makes the tunnels such a good Rockford mystery. Beneath all the embellishment is a physical reality. Rockford really did build underground infrastructure. Some passages survived long enough for modern people to enter them. Others presumably disappeared when factories were demolished, streets reconstructed and buildings redeveloped.

What happened inside every one of those spaces during the last century is another question entirely. A utility tunnel built for steam pipes doesn't stop being a utility tunnel because somebody once carried a case of illegal whiskey through it. Buildings acquire unofficial uses. People take shortcuts. Teenagers explore places they aren't supposed to explore. Employees discover doors and stairways that don't appear on the public tour.

That leaves enough uncertainty for the stories to survive.

Somewhere in Rockford, somebody still knows about a door in a basement. Somebody's father went through it once. Somebody remembers a tunnel being sealed. Somebody knows somebody who could supposedly show you where the entrance used to be.

And that's usually where the story ends.

For anyone tempted to conduct their own investigation, don't. Surviving underground industrial spaces can be private property and may contain asbestos, unstable structures, contaminated materials, standing water, electrical hazards and other considerably less romantic remnants of Rockford's industrial past. Trespassing through an abandoned tunnel is a poor way to discover that the most dangerous thing lurking beneath Rockford isn't paranormal at all.

So for now, the tunnels can keep some of their secrets. The documented passages belong to Rockford history. The bootleggers, hidden escape routes and vast subterranean networks remain somewhere between memory and folklore.

And somewhere beneath our feet, perhaps behind a bricked-over doorway nobody has opened in fifty years, there's probably another story waiting to be found.

THE ROCKFORD FILE REMAINS OPEN.

 

Needs More Sock Monkey: Rockford’s Accidental Icon

An inside joke among Rockford creatives is “Needs more sock monkey.” Because all work involving Rockford must apparently have The Symbol, a sock monkey, a screw, or the Rockford Peaches in it.

The sock monkey, at least, has earned the right to keep showing up.

Rockford’s connection to the familiar brown-and-white sock monkey begins with the Nelson Knitting Company, founded in Rockford in the late nineteenth century. The company manufactured work socks, eventually producing the distinctive Rockford Red Heel sock—the brown sock with the unmistakable red heel that would become the raw material for generations of homemade monkeys.

Needs more Sock Monkey!

The socks weren't originally toys. They were sturdy workwear, made for people who needed socks that could survive factories, farms, workshops, and long days on their feet. But somewhere along the way, people began turning worn or spare pairs into stuffed animals.

And the sock monkey was born.

Exactly who made the first sock monkey is difficult to establish. Homemade stuffed animals made from socks existed in various forms, and the idea developed through folk craft rather than through a single inventor sitting down and designing a commercial toy. What Rockford supplied was the sock that gave the most famous version its face.

That red heel changed everything.

Turn a Rockford Red Heel sock inside out, cut it, sew it and stuff it, and the red heel becomes the monkey's wonderfully oversized mouth. The sock's contrasting areas naturally lend themselves to the hands, feet and other features. The material itself practically suggests what it wants to become.

By the mid-twentieth century, the Nelson Knitting Company recognized what people were doing with its socks and began promoting the connection. Instructions for making sock monkeys were eventually included with packages of Rockford Red Heel socks, helping turn a regional homemade craft into an American folk-art tradition.

The company itself changed hands over the years, but the Rockford Red Heel sock survived. Today the socks are associated with the Fox River Mills brand, while the monkey they inspired has long since escaped the package.

Sock monkeys became children's toys, craft projects, collectibles, souvenirs and eventually nostalgia objects. There are antique sock monkeys and handmade sock monkeys, miniature monkeys and enormous monkeys. People have dressed them as brides, bikers, baseball players, soldiers, superheroes and probably every other occupation or character somebody could figure out how to fit into a pair of tiny pants.

Rockford, naturally, embraced the connection.

The sock monkey has become one of those peculiar local symbols that makes almost no sense until you know the story. It isn't a monument to an industrial titan or a famous battle. It's the descendant of a pair of work socks made in an industrial Midwestern city and transformed at kitchen tables into something funny and affectionate.

Which may actually make it a better symbol of Rockford than some of the official ones.

Rockford spent generations making things. Screws, machine tools, furniture, socks and countless other products came out of its factories. Most disappeared into the ordinary machinery of American life without anyone thinking much about where they came from.

One of those products grew ears, a tail and a big red mouth.

More than a century later, it's still hanging around.

And if you're designing something about Rockford and can't figure out what's missing, don't worry.

Somebody will tell you.

Needs more sock monkey.

 

How Rockford Became the Screw City

Of all the nicknames Rockford has accumulated over the years, none has quite the personality of Screw City.

It sounds like a joke now. It wasn't.

For much of the twentieth century, Rockford was one of America's great manufacturing centers for screws, bolts, nuts, fasteners and the machinery used to make them. The industry became so important here that Rockford eventually proclaimed itself the “Screw Capital of the World.”

But the story of Screw City actually begins with something completely different: furniture.

Welcome to Screw City

From Furniture City to Screw City

Beginning in the nineteenth century, large numbers of Swedish immigrants settled in Rockford, many bringing woodworking and metalworking skills with them. Those craftsmen helped turn Rockford into one of the country's leading furniture-manufacturing centers.

By the 1880s, Rockford had become a major furniture producer.

And furniture factories needed things.

Hinges. Locks. Cabinet hardware. Nails. Screws.

Instead of importing everything from somewhere else, Rockford entrepreneurs increasingly began making those things here.

That helped create an industrial ecosystem in which one Rockford factory supplied another. Furniture manufacturing encouraged hardware manufacturing. Hardware manufacturing encouraged metalworking. Metalworking encouraged machine-tool manufacturing.

The city became very good at making things that made other things.

National Lock and the Rise of Fasteners

One important step came with the development of National Lock Company in the early twentieth century.

National Lock manufactured locks, hinges and other hardware and eventually became one of Rockford's major employers. By 1950, the company employed more than 2,000 people.

Then came companies devoted even more directly to fasteners.

Rockford Screw Products was organized around 1930 by former National Lock associates. It began modestly, reportedly with just 15 customers, but expanded rapidly as it developed specialized screws and fasteners for industries such as automobile manufacturing.

Rockford was no longer simply making screws for furniture.

It was making fasteners for America.

Then Came the War

World War II transformed Rockford manufacturing.

The enormous demand for aircraft, tanks, vehicles, weapons and machinery created an equally enormous demand for the humble pieces holding all those machines together.

Screws.

Bolts.

Fasteners.

Rockford already possessed the factories, machine tools, skilled machinists and industrial knowledge to produce them.

Companies such as Camcar and Rockford Screw Products became important parts of wartime manufacturing. Rockford Screw Products became a major producer of aircraft bolts, while the city's larger network of machine shops and manufacturers supplied components needed throughout American industry.

By the 1940s, Rockford was being called the Screw Capital of the World.

For once, civic boasting wasn't much of an exaggeration.

Billions of Them

After the war, Rockford's fastener industry didn't disappear.

America entered a massive period of automobile production, housing construction and industrial expansion. All of it required hardware.

Rockford factories responded by producing screws, nuts, bolts and specialized fasteners by the millions—and eventually billions—for manufacturers around the country and the world.

By mid-century, manufacturing dominated the local economy. Generations of Rockford families went to work in factories producing machine tools, automotive components, cabinet hardware, aircraft parts and fasteners.

The city's identity became inseparable from manufacturing.

Screw City stuck.

More Than a Funny Nickname

Beginning in the 1970s and especially during the industrial upheavals of the 1980s, Rockford lost a substantial portion of the manufacturing economy that had created Screw City.

Factories closed. Companies moved. Employment declined.

But the nickname survived.

And perhaps that's because Screw City came to mean something slightly larger than screws.

It describes the Rockford that knew how to make things.

The city of machinists, toolmakers, engineers, factory workers and small manufacturers. A place where one company made furniture, another made the hardware for the furniture, another built the machines that made the hardware, and somebody down the street figured out how to make all of it faster.

Today you can still find Screw City on shirts, sports uniforms, businesses and signs around Rockford.

Sometimes it's used affectionately. Sometimes ironically. And occasionally someone unfamiliar with Rockford hears it and wonders exactly what kind of town they've wandered into.

But the explanation is wonderfully straightforward.

For decades, if something somewhere in America needed to be held together, there was a pretty good chance Rockford made the thing that held it together.

That's why we're the Screw City.

 

Uncle Nick's: Rockford's Late-Night Tradition

Long before gyros were common in northern Illinois, a man known simply as Uncle Nick brought Greek food to Rockford. After arriving in the city in 1974, he opened the first Uncle Nick's restaurant in 1980 with the goal of serving fresh, high-quality Greek food quickly and affordably. More than four decades later, the family-owned business remains one of Rockford's most recognizable local restaurants.

But Uncle Nick's is more than its history—it's part of Rockford's culture.

Uncle Nick's Rockford

For generations of Rockfordians, the downtown location has been the place you found yourself after midnight. Whether you were leaving a concert, working second shift, celebrating with friends, or just craving a gyro at 2 a.m., there was comfort in knowing Uncle Nick's lights would still be on. Standing at the pickup window, waiting for your order with a handful of strangers, became a small but familiar Rockford ritual.

Ask longtime residents about the city's unofficial signature sandwich, and many will answer without hesitation: the Uncle Nick's gyro. The restaurant has become one of those rare local institutions that people measure their lives against—remembering first dates, late-night adventures, and decades of conversations over fries and tzatziki.

Some businesses become landmarks because of their buildings.

Others become landmarks because of the memories people carry away from them.

Uncle Nick's has been doing both since 1980.

 

The Story of Rockford’s Sinnissippi Park: A Century of Beauty, Art, and Community

Long before Rockford became known as a center of industry and innovation, the Rock River was already shaping the identity of the city. One of the most treasured places along that river is Sinnissippi Park, a historic landscape that has served generations of residents as a place for recreation, reflection, and community gatherings.

Sinnissippi Park

The story of Sinnissippi Park began in the late 19th century, when Rockford leaders and residents began investing in public parks as the city grew. In 1875, the land that would become part of the park system was acquired, and over time the area was transformed from riverfront land into one of Rockford’s most recognizable public spaces.

The park’s name comes from the Native American term “Sinnissippi,” often translated as “rocky waters,” a reference to the Rock River. The river had long been central to the region’s history, from Indigenous communities who lived along its banks to the industries that powered Rockford’s growth.

One of the park’s most famous landmarks is the Sinnissippi Gardens, developed in the early 20th century. The gardens became known for their carefully designed landscapes, colorful plant displays, and peaceful walking paths. Over the decades, the gardens have remained a favorite destination for residents and visitors.

Another important part of Sinnissippi Park’s history is the Nicholas Conservatory and Gardens, located along the riverfront. While the current conservatory opened in 2011, it continues a long tradition of public horticulture in the area, connecting modern visitors with Rockford’s historic appreciation for gardens and natural spaces.

The park is also home to the historic Sinnissippi Band Shell, which has hosted concerts and community events for many years. Built in 1950, the band shell became a gathering place where generations of Rockford residents enjoyed music and summer evenings together.

Sinnissippi Park’s history reflects the broader story of Rockford itself: a city built by people who valued creativity, community, and connection to the natural landscape. More than a century after its creation, the park remains a reminder that preserving public spaces helps preserve the memories and traditions of a community.

Today, visitors walking through Sinnissippi Park are experiencing more than beautiful scenery — they are walking through a living chapter of Rockford history.

 

The Rockford Ski Broncs: Flying Above the Rock River

Every summer, crowds gather along the banks of the Rock River to watch something that never quite stops feeling impossible.

A skier cuts across the water, launches from a ramp, and seems to hang in the air just a little longer than gravity should allow.

Welcome to the world of the Rockford Ski Broncs.

Rockford Ski Broncs

Founded in 1961, the Ski Broncs have spent more than six decades entertaining audiences with water skiing, barefoot skiing, pyramids, jumps, ballet lines, and precision performances. What began as a local ski club has grown into one of Rockford's most recognizable summer traditions and one of the longest-running volunteer water ski show teams in the Midwest.

Unlike professional touring acts, the Ski Broncs are made up of volunteers. Members range from young children just learning the sport to experienced performers who have spent decades on the water. Families often participate together, making the organization as much a community as a show.

For generations of Rockford residents, an evening at Shorewood Park has become a summertime ritual. Blankets spread across the grass. Children wait for the first skier to appear around the bend. As the music starts, boats pull athletes into routines that combine athleticism, choreography, and more than a little courage.

The signature moments never get old. Human pyramids skim across the water with skiers stacked shoulder to shoulder. Jumpers launch from towering ramps. Barefoot skiers race across the surface at highway speeds, making one of the sport's most difficult skills look almost effortless.

Behind every performance are countless hours of practice. The timing has to be exact. Every skier depends on everyone else doing their part. Success is measured not only by spectacular stunts but by trust, teamwork, and preparation.

The Ski Broncs have represented Rockford at competitions and exhibitions throughout the country, earning national recognition while remaining firmly rooted in their hometown. Their mission has always been larger than entertainment. They introduce young people to the sport, build confidence, encourage leadership, and create friendships that often last a lifetime.

Communities are remembered for many things. Some are known for their architecture. Others for their industries or sports teams.

Rockford has something a little different.

It has people willing to spend their summers flying across the Rock River simply to make thousands of strangers smile.

For more than sixty years, the Rockford Ski Broncs have reminded us that some of the city's greatest traditions aren't found inside buildings—they happen out on the water.

 

The Phantom Regiment: Rockford's Sound Heard Around the World

Some communities become known for a building, a business, or a famous person. Rockford has something a little different. It has a sound.

For nearly seventy years, the Phantom Regiment has carried the name of Rockford onto football fields, parade routes, and championship stages across the country. Long before many people had ever heard of Drum Corps International, young musicians from Rockford were proving that discipline, artistry, and hometown pride could produce something extraordinary.

The organization began in 1956 when members of Rockford's VFW Post 342 formed a competitive drum and bugle corps. Originally called the Rockford Rangers, the group adopted the name Phantom Regiment before ever making a public appearance, inspired by the title of a musical march they admired.

The Phantom Regiment

Success did not come overnight.

The early years included financial struggles, changing uniforms, borrowed instruments, and even the devastating loss of their corps hall in a fire. For a time, it looked as though the organization might disappear entirely. Instead, former members reorganized the corps in 1967, laying the foundation for what would become one of the most respected names in marching music.

By the mid-1970s, Phantom Regiment had become a fixture among the nation's elite drum corps. The corps has appeared in the Drum Corps International World Championship Finals every year since 1974, an astonishing run of consistency. Along the way came two DCI World Championships—1996 (shared) and 2008—as well as countless unforgettable productions that have become part of drum corps history.

Even if you've never attended a drum corps show, chances are you've seen Phantom Regiment somewhere in Rockford. Generations of local residents remember hearing rehearsals echoing across Beyer Stadium, watching the corps perform at Sinnissippi Park, or spotting the familiar black-and-white uniforms in parades. For many families, Phantom isn't simply an organization—it's part of growing up in Rockford.

What makes Phantom Regiment remarkable isn't just the trophies. It is the thousands of young people who have learned teamwork, dedication, leadership, and musicianship through the organization. Members come from across the country today, but the corps remains proudly rooted in the city where it began.

Every community has institutions that quietly shape its identity. Rockford has manufacturing, parks, gardens, museums—and it also has a drum corps whose influence extends far beyond northern Illinois.

When people in the marching arts hear the words Phantom Regiment, they don't just think of a performance.

They think of Rockford.

 

Who Built Rockford's Neighborhoods?

Every city has neighborhoods.

Most of us know where they are. We might even know which ones we grew up in.

But have you ever stopped to wonder who built them?

Not the houses.

The neighborhoods themselves.

Long before subdivisions had names and long before streets were paved, someone stood on a piece of open prairie or woodland and imagined what would one day become part of Rockford.

Some of those names have vanished from everyday conversation.

Others are hiding in plain sight.

Before There Was Rockford

Here's a fact that surprises many lifelong residents:

Before there was Rockford, there were two competing settlements.

On the west side of the Rock River stood Kentville, established by Germanicus Kent.

Across the river was Haightsville, founded by Daniel Shaw Haight.

Swedetown

Neither settlement could become the community's center without a bridge connecting the two sides. Haight helped finance the first bridge across the Rock River, and in 1839 the two communities merged to form the village of Rockford.

In a very real sense, every Rockford neighborhood traces its roots back to those two tiny settlements.

Haight Village

Haight's name still survives in one of Rockford's oldest neighborhoods.

Daniel Shaw Haight wasn't simply an early settler. He served as the area's first sheriff, became its first postmaster, invested in its earliest infrastructure, and helped transform a frontier crossing into a permanent community.

Today, people walk streets where some of Rockford's earliest citizens built their homes, often without realizing they're standing in one of the city's original neighborhoods.

History has a way of becoming invisible.

Brown's Hills and Knightsville

Some neighborhoods grew because people wanted homes.

Others grew because people needed workers.

In the late nineteenth century, developer B. A. Knight laid out what became known as Knightsville, providing housing near the Skandia Furniture Company. At a time when Rockford was becoming one of America's furniture capitals, neighborhoods and industry often grew together.

Factories didn't simply create jobs.

They created communities.

Many of the streets we drive today exist because thousands of workers once walked them to work every morning.

Churchill's Grove

Churchill's Grove carries the name of early landowner Phineas Penfield Churchill, but its streets tell another story.

Look closely at a map and you'll notice names honoring Civil War generals. That's no accident.

Nearby stood Camp Fuller, a Civil War training camp where Illinois soldiers prepared for service. Long after the tents disappeared, the names remained.

Sometimes history survives not in monuments, but in street signs.

Garfield Avenue

Every city has a street that became an address.

For Rockford, Garfield Avenue filled that role for many years.

Industrialists, business leaders, and prominent families built substantial homes there as Rockford's manufacturing economy flourished. Walking the avenue today is like reading a history book written in brick, limestone, and stained glass.

The houses tell the story of a city that once believed its greatest years were still ahead.

What Other Stories Are Waiting?

Once you begin asking who founded a neighborhood, it's difficult to stop.

Who named your street?

Why is that park there?

What stood on that vacant lot before the parking lot?

Which factory employed everyone on the block?

What disappeared without anyone noticing?

These aren't just trivia questions.

They're the hidden biography of the city.

Rockford didn't appear overnight.

It was imagined by surveyors, entrepreneurs, immigrants, laborers, carpenters, merchants, families, and dreamers. Their names survive in neighborhoods we pass every day, even if we've forgotten the people behind them.

Maybe that's the real lesson.

The next time you drive through Haight Village, Churchill's Grove, Brown's Hills, or Garfield Avenue, remember that you're not simply passing through another neighborhood.

You're driving through someone else's idea of the future.

And, nearly two centuries later, you're still living in it.

 

The Day Santa Fell From the Sky: Rockford's Most Unforgettable Christmas Story

If you grew up in Rockford, chances are you've heard someone say it.

"Remember when Santa parachuted to his death at North Towne Mall?"

It sounds like one of those stories that gets bigger every time it's told—a local legend that can't possibly be true.

Except...it is.

Well, almost.

The accident happened on December 4, 1965, during a Christmas promotion at North Towne Shopping Center. In an era when shopping centers competed to put on ever-bigger holiday spectacles, the plan was simple enough: Santa Claus would make a dramatic entrance by parachute. Families packed the parking lot, children looked to the sky, and the holiday season was about to begin with a flourish.

Two experienced skydivers climbed into a small airplane that afternoon.

Twenty-nine-year-old Bill Fleming was dressed as Santa Claus.

Forty-year-old Cornelius "Connie" O'Rourke Jr., a veteran parachutist with nearly 1,000 jumps to his credit, played Santa's helper. O'Rourke was no amateur. He was licensed not only to skydive, but also to inspect, repair, and pack parachutes—a level of expertise few possessed.

The pair jumped from approximately 2,600 to 3,000 feet. Smoke devices attached to O'Rourke's legs were intended to help the crowd follow their descent.

Then something went terribly wrong.

O'Rourke's main parachute failed to deploy properly. His reserve chute also became entangled, leaving him in freefall. From the airplane, Fleming could see the emergency unfolding but could do nothing except continue with his own jump.

On the ground, however, few people understood what they were seeing.

Many spectators assumed the first falling figure was a practice dummy. In fact, organizers reportedly announced that it was a dummy in an effort to keep the crowd calm. Parents continued holding children's hands. Kids kept pointing toward the sky.

Only a handful of people realized they were witnessing a fatal accident.

O'Rourke missed the shopping center parking lot entirely, crashing into the backyard of a nearby home on Latham Street. He was pronounced dead shortly afterward from massive injuries. Remarkably, no one else was injured.

Meanwhile, Fleming completed his landing as Santa. Following the event's emergency plan, he quietly entered Santa's House, removed his costume, and another Santa took his place while Fleming rushed to the hospital. It remains one of the strangest and saddest details in Rockford history—a Christmas celebration continuing while its star performer hurried away after watching a fellow skydiver die.

Federal Aviation Agency investigators examined O'Rourke's equipment but never identified a definitive mechanical cause. Considering O'Rourke's extensive experience and qualifications, the accident was considered exceptionally rare.

How the Legend Changed

Over the decades, memory did what memory often does.

The story gradually became:

"Santa parachuted to his death."

Technically, that isn't accurate.

The man portraying Santa, Bill Fleming, landed safely. It was Santa's helper, Cornelius O'Rourke, who lost his life.

But history doesn't always survive in perfect detail. After sixty years of retelling, the two parachutists merged into a single unforgettable image: Santa falling from the winter sky over Rockford.

For many longtime residents, it remains one of those "Where were you?" moments. People who were children that day still recall the confusion. Others remember hearing the story from parents or grandparents. New generations often assume it's just another urban legend—until they discover it really happened.

A Different Kind of Christmas Memory

North Towne Mall itself has changed dramatically over the decades. Stores have come and gone. The crowds of the 1960s are long gone. But this story has remained part of Rockford's shared memory.

It isn't remembered because it's sensational.

It's remembered because it reminds us that behind every local legend is a real person.

Cornelius O'Rourke wasn't simply "the man who fell." He was a husband, a father of two young daughters, and an experienced skydiver who volunteered to help create a memorable Christmas afternoon for hundreds of local families.

Instead, he became part of Rockford history.

Sometimes the stories that endure aren't the ones we would have chosen to tell.

 

Camp Grant: Rockford's Military City

For much of the twentieth century, Rockford was known not only as a manufacturing center but also as the home of Camp Grant, one of the largest military training installations in the Midwest.

Established in 1917 during World War I, Camp Grant trained hundreds of thousands of American soldiers before they departed for Europe. The camp expanded dramatically during World War II, once again becoming a major center for military instruction and logistics. At its peak, it functioned almost like a small city, complete with hospitals, barracks, roads, and support facilities.

Camp Grant Rockford

Like many military installations of its era, Camp Grant experienced both triumph and tragedy. During the influenza pandemic of 1918, the camp suffered one of the nation's most devastating outbreaks, reminding us that history is shaped not only by battles abroad but also by events closer to home.

Following the war years, most of Camp Grant disappeared as the property found new uses. Today the former grounds are home to businesses, institutions, and neighborhoods, with only a handful of monuments and historical markers hinting at the enormous military community that once stood there.

Rockford's history extends well beyond factories and furniture. The story of Camp Grant reminds us that our city played an important role in national history, sending generations of soldiers into service while leaving a lasting mark on the region itself.

Exploring these local stories helps preserve the character of Rockford and provides a deeper appreciation for the people and places that shaped the community we know today.

 

Prairie Zen: Finding Rockford's Quiet Places

Rockford is often defined by its industry, its architecture, its history, and its resilience.

But there is another Rockford.

It exists in the tall prairie grasses bending beneath an autumn wind. It follows Hall Creek through the woods at Wild Roots Nature Center. It waits in the first trillium of spring, the call of a red-winged blackbird, and the long shadows stretching across the Rock River at sunset.

Over the past year I've begun describing this perspective as Prairie Zen.

It isn't a movement or an organization. It's simply a way of paying attention.

Where traditional Zen literature often draws inspiration from bamboo forests, mountain temples, and Japanese gardens, Prairie Zen finds its moments much closer to home. Northern Illinois has its own quiet language. It speaks through bur oaks, restored prairie, migrating sandhill cranes, gravel roads, milkweed, and changing skies.

Much of my recent haiku collection, Vanished Roads, grew directly from those landscapes.

Many of the poems were written while walking the trails at what is now Wild Roots Nature Center, listening to birds along Hall Creek, or simply standing still long enough to notice what the Midwest quietly offers every day.

One of the things that has made this project especially meaningful is seeing local organizations embrace that same connection.

Rockford Art Deli now carries Vanished Roads, and every copy purchased through the store helps support Wild Roots Nature Center. It's a wonderful example of how independent businesses, local artists, and conservation organizations can strengthen one another while celebrating what makes Rockford unique.

Cities are often judged by their skylines.

I think they're better judged by the places where people learn to slow down.

For me, Rockford's greatest treasures aren't only its buildings or businesses—they're the trails, forests, rivers, and prairie remnants that quietly remind us to pay attention.

That's Prairie Zen.

And perhaps it's something Rockford has been practicing all along.

A Rave Review of Thomas L. Vaultonburg's New Book Vanished Roads By Melanie Medved

                        Review of Vanished Roads By Melanie Medved

Buy Vanished Roads By Thomas L. Vaultonburg

I thought Thomas Vaultonburg's new collection of poems was going to stay with me for an afternoon, which is how long it took me to devour his latest publication, “Vanished Roads.” Instead, it's been lingering for two weeks now, in the way the first Autumn night air settles into your bones. It’s just sitting there, thick with emotional residue and meaning, while I struggle to succinctly put into words just how stellar the collection is.

Vaultonburg has been a favorite of mine for years. Following his literary career through everything from darker poetry to children's books and fiction, I've witnessed him move effortlessly between genres and forms. He has a strong ability to shapeshift as a writer, yet maintain his track record of consistent excellence in all genres. I was looking forward to his collection of haiku/short-form poetry, waiting to see if he could once again knock it out of the park. He has.

From the opening poem, which arrives not like a leaf drifting onto the page, but like a train waking you up in the night, Vaultonburg announces his poetic intention immediately— You’re going to feel something as you read these poems. The first three lines introduce a pattern he will use often throughout the book— most often staying true to the concept of traditional haiku using a central subject in nature (in this case, wind and bamboo) and adding a few perfectly chosen words to assign it an emotional impact (this time, human emotional frailty and ennui) that often jumps out at the reader with layers of meaning. He writes:

wind through bamboo

I too

Am hollow.

Then, after announcing himself and his arrival, without hesitation, he rolls up his sleeves and trudges off in old boots into the colorful territory: dawn, peonies, the evening rain, deer, wolf tracks and more. Quietly threading the beautiful natural landscapes we all encounter each day, with the fragile emotional territory of grief, regret, loneliness, and hope— one after the other, painting them together in a style that is somehow both bold and vivid and soft and gentle at the same time— Vaultonburg is like the Van Gogh of poetry.

Though his subjects are universally relatable, they are still deeply personal, as evident early on pages 8 and 9, when he writes about the passing of two family members in a way that made me ache with empathy and understanding. Those feelings accumulate with each page, and nearly every haiku hits hard. By the final page you’re sitting there with the wind knocked out of you, not by a hurricane, but by a light spring rain. The weight of his tiny gray book is difficult to shake, in the best possible ways.

A bonus is that it felt like a two-in-one book: poetry combined with Buddhist wisdom. Many writers try hard to “teach” lessons, and while Vaultonburg wasn’t even trying, he landed quite a few with ease:

bee in the window

I open it

for both of us

(page 30)

He has a subtle yet strong way of showing how our lives intersect with the natural world, and the impact each can have on the other. He saves a bee, and in doing so, he’s sparing a small piece of himself. Those everyday sadnesses of trapped bees lie in juxtaposition with hope and happiness on the pages. “Wheat fields ablaze with joy” and prairie winds that steal hats are felt just as strongly through his curated words. He writes of dharma and dragonflies opposite a page which encourages the reader to:

Ask the snow

to forgive you—

then leave no trail

Last but not least, another highlight are the illustrations by his writing partner Tré, whose tiny pen-and-ink style drawings show up at just the right time and place to add another beautiful layer to the already outstanding book. The two have proven they are a powerhouse before in their combined haiku/illustration book, “Moonscape,” and it is just as magical to see little glimpses of her art show up here in his solo volume.

In summary, this is truly some of the most recent memorable poetry I’ve experienced in years. After closing this book, I felt like I’d discovered something for the first time. My mind went back to third grade when I first read Carl Sandburg’s poem “Fog.” 40 years and thousands of poems later, it’s hard to recapture the joy that I felt in that classroom of my first favorite poem, and yet, Thomas Vaultonburgh has handed me that joy again with “Vanished Roads.” His strict inventory of words, ability to capture single snapshots in time, and his ability to produce a book this wise without a single trace of pretention should be embraced and applauded by old and new fans of poetry alike.